1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to software systems, specifically systems designed to deliver customer service over the worldwide web and other networks.
The present invention relates generally to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and more specifically it relates to an audio message driven customer interaction queuing system (AMDCIQS) for audio-enabled web pages in a retail or customer support context. More generally, the system may include message types such as audio (primarily voice), video, text (email and SMS (short Messaging Service)) and fax. More specifically, this system primarily allows web page visitors to utter questions into a browser-resident voice recorder application akin to a Walkie-Talkie, queues these questions along with the originating web page URL and user data before distributing them to customer service agents. These Agents can then research the question, using the web page as reference, and respond with an audio (or other) message, played upon the recorder application by the User after some brief service interval.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It can be appreciated that CRM applications have been in use for years, and have become a natural melting pot for traditional telephony customer interaction and newly emerging web contact paradigms such as email, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), web call-back request, and text chatting. Of these, voice applications are of particular interest in this discussion, but the other channels offer insight into the customer service equation as their service characteristics become germane to this invention.
The main problem with conventional CRM web applications is that their support for voice interaction is unsatisfactory, and voice interaction remains the channel preferred by customers and the most effective and proven channel for sales and support. Existing web-oriented customer service involves a compendium of textual and visual self-help material designed to deflect extraneous call traffic from call centers. When interaction is actually desired by customers on the web, their options include sending email to the vendor, asking for an immediate call back from the vendor, text chatting with customer support agents, or opening a VoIP voice session with an agent. The weaknesses of each of these methods appear in this discussion.
Email contact into CRM applications is managed on the user side through web-forms and/or email programs designed to help users isolate issues for discussion, and frequently targets groups within the vendor using the To: address to aid in triage of incoming service requests. In the vendor system, an ERMS or Email Response Management System aggregates the incoming email traffic, performs routing analysis over the mail, and routes them to service queues. In the contact center, managers devise staffing models to address this traffic in addition to the more prevalent voice traffic that besets the typical contact center. Service Level Agreements, or SLAs for email contacts vary widely, from as little as a few minutes for an automatically generated “receipt” response, to days or weeks. On average, the response cycle exceeds 24 hours. The net effect of this has been to damage the customer's expectation for timely service on this channel best characterized as a text message driven system.
Web Call Back is a second common form of customer interaction on websites and involves the voice medium. The drawbacks of this approach are threefold however. First, the User needs to wait for a call back, which can take a variable amount of time. The User generally receives no notification of expected wait time, further undermining the expectation for timely or “worthwhile” service. Second, the User may need to drop the ISP connection to the Internet in order to receive the call. This is likely to disrupt the context for the question, and is likely to result in no transaction whatsoever. The third weakness of this approach is that the staffing model required to support web call back is identical to an out-dialing telemarketing application. As such, because the calls are real time and have indeterminate length, the model for staffing a center to field such calls is expensive. Add to that the expense of traditional call center infrastructure, and the attractiveness of this contact channel diminishes.
Text-chatting customer interaction shares some of the same weaknesses as Web Call Back from a staffing perspective. The primary weakness of this approach is that the staffing model required to support text chat is identical to an out-dial telemarketing application. As such, because the conversations are real time and have indeterminate length, the model for staffing a center to field such calls is expensive. Another problem with text chat is that it requires text entry for users which is a frequent barrier to usage. A third problem with it is the User must wait in a queue before receiving service, further diminishing the User's excitement impulse to establish contact.
VoIP is the last form of current customer interaction over the web and shares the queuing weaknesses of the approaches above as well as their expensive staffing models since it is connection oriented. This means that users on either end of a connection must participate at the same time, unlike a messaging application. Additionally, VoIP infrastructure is expensive to acquire and manage. Finally, and most fatefully, the quality of VoIP remains a problem for most users. Even with the quick saturation of broadband services into the consumer market, underlying limitations of shared Internet communications without Quality of Server (QoS) guarantees makes VoIP unreliable and unsatisfying for everyone. VoIP voice fidelity is generally so bad that the pay-services for VoIP suffer due the prevalent belief it is inherently free because of its poor quality. For these reasons, the adoption curve for VoIP has been disappointing, even though it will ultimately be a useful contact channel. The horizon for this usefulness is still several years away at earliest. QoS issues aside, VoIP will always necessitate an expensive staffing model and infrastructure to support. And regardless of network performance improvements, any connection-oriented service technology forces customers to “queue” before asking their questions.
Though there has been no application to date of Instant Messaging technology for CRM, it is worth mentioning as it most closely resembles aspects of the invention under discussion here. Instant Messaging allows users to send text to one another, and permits audio and video real-time streaming. These applications, however, function in a peer-to-peer mode (even though intermediated by a host server) in which users seek out specific other users. What has not happened, though, is the application of this mode of interaction for N:1 (N to one) customer service, and more particularly, not for voice. It is the combination of the last two features that drives a portion of the novelty of this application.
While these devices may be suitable for the particular purpose to which they address, they are not as suitable for voice-enabled web customer service as is the technology represented here. The net result of the above discussion is a pastiche of customer dissatisfaction and customer service organization frustration.
On the customer side, the interaction is marked by inconvenience, waiting, unnatural interaction paradigms employing text input and general technical obstacle. The result is diminished excitement on the part of consumer, reduced patience with inhumane technology solutions that solve nothing, drive frustration, and ultimately, undermine the transaction itself
On the customer service organization side, center managers are frustrated at mounting expenses from increasing staffing models, new infrastructure costs that deliver under whelming performance, and burnt out customer service agents. The net result of the overload and expense pressure is a retreat from solving the problem.
In these respects, a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in so doing provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of voice-enabled web pages in a retail or customer support context, allowing web page visitors to utter questions into a browser-resident recorder application akin to a Walkie-Talkie. These questions are then queued along with originating web page information and user data and distributed to customer service agents. Agents can then research the question using the web page as reference, and respond with an audio (or other) message.
3. Objects and Advantages
To ease the acronym burden in this discussion, AMDCIQS is hereafter replaced with the name “Blurt”, the inventor's name for the technology herein described. In view of the foregoing disadvantages inherent in the known types of CRM applications now present in the prior art, the present invention (Blurt) provides a new audio message driven customer interaction queuing system with the following advantages:
The primary feature of Blurt is the ability of the Blurt player to operate without the need to queue with customer service and wait for an agent before satisfying the customer's desire to ask a question. This results in the following advantages:                (a) Users can immediately record messages (of various media types) at the moment of conception.        (b) Users can issue messages spontaneously into a customer service organization without waiting for agents to become available first.        (c) Disruption is minimized to user routine.        (d) Impulse contact is enabled.        (e) Contact model is simplified for user.        
A second primary feature of Blurt is that it is not connection-oriented, relying on messages as a medium of exchange versus persistent real-time telecom sessions (connections). The connectionless feature leads to a several advantages in the customer service center hosting Blurt:                (a) Load balancing for service requests.        (b) Reduced staffing requirements in service center.        (c) Audio fidelity improvement of messages (versus VoIP).        (d) Elimination (or avoidance) of expensive infrastructure (VoIP switches, ACDs and PBX switches).        
The general purpose of the present invention, which will be described subsequently in greater detail, is to provide a new voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that has many of the advantages of the CRM applications mentioned heretofore and many novel features that result in a new voice message driven customer interaction queuing system which is not anticipated, rendered obvious, suggested, or even implied by any of the prior art CRM applications, either alone or in any combination thereof.
This system can be used to voice-enable web pages in a retail or customer support context, allowing web page visitors to utter questions into a browser-resident recorder/player application akin to a Walkie-Talkie. It then allows customers to continue browsing the website or shopping while customer service formulates their answer. Finally, it allows the user to receive the answer and listen to it on the radio-like device. This response cycle is designed to occur in less than about 2 minutes, which is usually less time than spent navigating a traditional call center phone menu. The ease of use, immediacy, instant familiarity with the device paradigm, and quick response time combine to make it easier for people to make a buying decision or to get help when they need it, thereby increasing transaction success rate.
The following business objectives succinctly list the high-level key issues addressed by the invention:                (a) The primary business objective is to increase on-line sales effectiveness by targeting causes for transaction abandonment.        (b) A second primary business objective is to enable spontaneous customer voice contact via the web order to establish sales opportunities and exploit the web sales channel        (c) Another business objective is to increase voice quality of web-transmitted voice such that the channel becomes acceptable to agents and customers        (d) Another business objective is to enable impulse contact from customers in order to establish sales opportunities        (e) Another business objective is reducing call center staffing expenses        (f) Another business objective is to reduce infrastructure and PSTN toll service costs.        (g) Another business objective is to relieve the “real time” constraints placed upon customer service organizations and the expense that results        
The technical process behind the invention addresses these needs. It allows web page visitors to utter questions into a browser-resident recorder application that visually resembles and functions like a Walkie-Talkie. These questions are queued with originating web page information and user data and distributed to customer service agents. These agents then research the question using the web page as reference, and respond with an audio message. The web page visitor plays the response upon the browser-resident player.
It should be noted that this voice message driven interaction paradigm applies to non-web applications as well. Traditional telephone customer service operations could employ this message-driven model as well, employing the back-end queuing function described above to achieve similar cost economies in the customer service operation to those described here in the web context.
The following technical objectives support the stated business objectives:                (a) A primary object of the present invention is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that will overcome the shortcomings of the prior art devices.        (b) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that enables voice message driven customer interaction queuing for persons desiring voice-oriented customer service on websites.        (c) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that allows web site visitors to utter questions into a browser-resident recorder application akin to a Walkie-Talkie 2-way radio, and send these messages to customer service for timely handling.        (d) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that offers a method for email-style store and forward service delivery for audio messages with a brief service interval (less than 1 minute message roundtrip is possible), supported by a reduced staffing model compared to that for connection-oriented call-handling contact centers.        (e) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that queues audio questions along with originating web page URL and user information and then distributes these messages and supplemental data to customer service agents,        (f) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that allows customer service agents to respond to questions with audio messages and route these answers back to the users initiating contact.        (g) Another object is to provide a server-side agent selection process for distribution of messages based upon topic of the originating URL, user data, availability of agent, work load of agent, and immediate prior history servicing the specific customer.        (h) Another object is to leverage platform-independent development tools that facilitate cross-platform portation of the invention.        (i) Another object is to develop DBMS independent architecture through the elimination of DBMS specific implementation features such as stored procedures and triggers.        (j) Another object of the invention is to create an architecture easily assimilated into either IT infrastructure of an end customer, or into the product suite architecture of a vendor in the CRM or CTI space.        (k) Another object is to provide continuity of service to the customer by assigning subsequent customer messages to the same agent until the session is concluded.        (l) Another object is to provide an administrative facility for the creation, management and deletion of agent accounts, user data profiles, and message management.        (m) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that offers high voice quality by using client-side multi-media codec services for voice messages transported via the Internet.        (n) Another object of the invention is to provide a system that compresses voice into acceptably small files for transfer in an acceptably timely manner over a slow speed dialup connection at 28.8 kbps.        (o) Another object of the invention is to provide a user interface that downloads to the client browser in an acceptably timely manner over a slow speed dialup connection at 28.8 kbps.        (p) Another object of the invention is to provide a user interface that immediate taps into familiar user expectations by using a “Walkie-Talkie-like” interface requiring minimal explanation to operate successfully.        (q) Another object of the invention is to provide a user interface with toy-like appeal that encourages usage by leveraging user curiosity.        (r) Another object is to provide a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system that works independently of the variable quality of interne transport resulting from network latency (transport delay) and jitter (variation in latency), thereby increasing voice fidelity dramatically.        
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become obvious to the reader and it is intended that these objects and advantages be within the scope of the present invention.
To the accomplishment of the above and related objects, this invention may be embodied in the form illustrated in the accompanying drawings, attention being called to the fact, however, that the drawings are illustrative only, and that changes may be made in the specific construction illustrated.